Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1887-02-10
MAKING LAND COMMON PROP
ERTY.
How 1t Could be Done.

IT this George idea prevails, and land
is made the property of the whole peo-
pie I shall have to deed my land to the
State, shall I not?
4 No. In the first place you cannot
move your land out Of the jurisdiction
of the State and hence it needs no deed.
The state already exercises the right Of
eminent domain, as we call it, over
you and your land, and that is all it
/ would do then. 1t would, in the Sec
ond place, encourage and secure, more
and better than it does now, the pri-
vate possession of land, for it would
prevent it being held for purposes con-
trary to good public policy, for specula-
ton. and extortion, and your own in-
terest would control you in holding
only as much as you needed for your
own employment, and you would leave
the rest of the world open for others to
employ themselves upon.
How? / do not understand it. What's
the use of making all this fuss about
making land common property, If you
are going to leave the deeds as they
are now?
Well, you would soon find out, if all
taxation were put upon the rental VAL
ues of the land, that deeds were useful
only when men want to play dog-in-
the-manger with land.
Yes, but how would I prevent any
one from taking my land from me if L
did not have q deed to it:
Because nobody else would have a
deed to it. How do you prevent any
one else from taking possession Of your
wagon, horse, cow, or anything else
that you possess without holding q
deed?
Then where in the world would the
states exercise of its rights to the land
come in?
When you refused to pay taxes.
What! would it seize and sell the
land and all my Improvements with it
and SO take from me what it had taken
me years of toll to accumulate?
No; there you are mistaken again.
The land already belongs to the state
and why should it sell it from you
when you are only the man in posses
sion and not the owner in fee? The
state would make delinquent taxes out
of your personal property and before
you were stripped you would see how
profitless it was to own more land than
you could cultivate ysaraelf and yoa
would be glad to put some other man
in possession of the rest SO that the
taxes would not cnme against you.
Yes. but what il 1 had no property
in the state and lived in Canada, Eng
land. France, or Germany, how would
the state get my personal property
then, with no improvement ON NV
land, and myself and all my personal
property in another countrye
Why your pretense Of ownership of
land in this country would be rathe.
laughable. This plan would not en-
courage aliens to speculate in our lands.
They would not want to pay taxes for
nothing, of course, and the taxes oeiup
in default, such lands would be declar-
ed vacant, and any citizen who needed
1t could settle upon it, improve it and
do as he pleased with it, so long as the
taxes were paid.
What if /, a foreigner, had paid good
honest money for 1t?
What difference should that make?
Ne matter how you obtain q thing, if
you use 1T contrary to good public poll
icy you forfeit your right to it. All the
spectator gains somebody else must
lose; and If you buy land on specula-
ton 1t is really no better, morally, than
buying ships and guns for piracy. We
have been so long accustomed to such
speculation that such statement
seems harsh, and even wild; but you
| are after other peoples earnings all the
same. Besides you bought the land
subject to any changes government
might make. and government Is not
wet-nnrse for spectators, nor bound to
make their ventures pan out.
Then would not want any of your
land and would bring more of my mon-
ey here to invest in it. And, let me
tell you, no man would want to own
any Of your land.
| That's just 1t. Land was not made
to be owned. but to be- worked; and IL
it were not grabbed by greedy specu-
iators there are millions of men who
want to work 1t but are not allowed to
do 80 unless they support the landlords
aud the government besides. 1t takes
$50. .0O0, 900 year, for example, to sup
port The city government of New York.
but it takes $500, ,00o, 900 year to sup
port landlosds, and they hold more
than half the lots within the corpora
tian--idle at that.
Now
There are millions OF hands want acres
ana miiiioas OF acres want hands,"
| Then
| "Miflions OF hands should have acres
And millions of acres should have hands.0
Come. be man, take the Standard
and learn something new and good.
/ FARMER.
Murrayvllle. H.. Jan. q, 1887.
1